“He’ll be all right enough by the time we want him,” finished the promoter, confidently; while his lordship was walking down the drive, feeling he had made nothing by his move, rather, on the contrary, given the advantage to a much cleverer and more ready man than himself.
“Hang the fellow!” he thought, “and his confounded self-sufficiency. Ah! my little friend,” he added out loud, as Lally parted the boughs of an evergreen oak, and looked out at him from among the greenery, “won’t you come and speak to me; won’t you tell me how you have been this long time?”
Not from any shyness, but from precisely the same feeling as that which makes a kitten bound off when a hand is stretched out coaxingly towards it, Lally allowed the branches to spring back and the foliage hide her.
“Don’t be rude, Lally; go and speak to Lord Kemms when he asks you,” said a voice from behind the shrubs, while two very white hands parted the branches above Lally’s head, while a very pretty face, half concealed by leaves, met the nobleman’s delighted eyes.
In a moment a sweet jingle of verse seemed ringing through the air.
That pleasant and goodly thing, a woman’s beauty—ever old, yet ever new—old as the world, yet new as the dawning day—chased all disagreeable thoughts out of Lord Kemms’ mind, while Dr. Mackay’s lines took their place:—
“And now and then I’ll see thy face,
Mid boughs and branches peeping.”
He had never known how beautiful a woman’s face could look till he beheld Bessie’s through that tracery of leaf, and twig, and stem.
More than ever now he desired to renew his acquaintance with Lally, who came forth from her hiding-place, and, in reply to his tender inquiries, informed him she was quite well,—that mamma was quite well; after which conversational effort, Lally—a surprised mass of muslin, hair, and freckles—stood, her lap full of flowers, looking at Lord Kemms.